


Undertow

by LenoirWhittlethorn



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 23:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8228132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LenoirWhittlethorn/pseuds/LenoirWhittlethorn
Summary: (Set after the end of season one). Lance is adrift in space, nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company.





	

**Author's Note:**

> First Voltron fic and definitely not the last one. This was inspired by my best friend's request.

When the spinning stopped, Lance opened his eyes and an audible gasp escaped him. His Blue Lion was gone and he was surrounded by nothingness. Goosebumps rose on his arms and legs, his body shivered involuntarily. Lance breathed through his mouth, panic nestling in his stomach. There was no sensation of ground or a central point.

Lack of sound made Lance dizzy and he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath through his nose and relaxed his limbs. He forcibly dug out memories of the ocean, how the waves sounded as they lapped against the shore, how they crashed into the rocks.

He thought of the nights where the sky and the sea seemed like one vast, open chasm of space.Lance remembered how his heart skipped at the beauty of the stars. Well, now he got what his child self always wanted.

Coran had explained that his exosuit would protect him for a while from the vacuum of space, his mind reasoned. How long was a while, though? Hopefully longer than a few ticks.

His teammates were screaming the last he heard, though now his comm link was giving off an eerie, low hum. Turn the eerie into something familiar.  Lance breathed deeply and remembered when he was little and struggled with nightmares. It was one of his older brothers, which one was it? Whichever one it was, Lance remembered being told the story of La Llorna and it terrified him. He ran to his mother, late one night, frustrated he couldn’t sleep and scared senseless that La Llorna would call out to him. His mother, groggy, pulled him into her arms and hummed.

“I dare Llorna to come and try to take you from me,” his mother rumbled and continued humming.

The panic slunk away and Lance smirked; he could almost feel the vibration of his mother’s melody. Then he familiarized the sensation of dead space. It was like being underwater, without the weight.

Lance thought of home, going to the beach with his family. The warm ocean water that he could never part away from, even as the sun dunked itself into it. He’d hold his breath and stay underwater in order to avoid his mother’s beckoning call. There was a comforting pressure like a giant bear hug, being under the waves. A liquid gradient of turquoise to blue to black surrounded him, yet it was comforting to see.

He opened his eyes and his blood went cold. There was no substance, no reassuring pressure. Who was he kidding? Nothing but blackness surrounded him, there weren’t any planets nearby. Lance tried kicking, waving his arms about, but there was no propulsion. No matter how much he writhed, he kept an agonizing slow float.

Dead man’s float.

He shook his head, trying to hold off the incoming memory of Pamela Scrunton’s pool party. He was ten, but he understood quickly that Pamela was a pretty girl and pretty girls liked impressive boys. Her family had the largest pool on the block; their deep end was no joke and her parents put a safety barrier up for the party. Lance obviously ignored that by walking over to that end of pool, making sure Pamela noticed.

He cannon-balled, but his breathing was off and he took in water. Lance never knew what it felt like to drown and it was something he didn’t want to learn. Flailing in desperation didn’t stop the water flooding his lungs. Chlorine burned his eyes, his throat, this wasn’t the ocean. Shadows danced frantically, above Lance, suddenly he was lifted out of the water by powerful arms.

The sun was glaring, burning into Lance’s already burnt eyes. There was a chorus of worried questions, but Lance clearly heard his mother calling him. He tried speaking, but he couldn’t get air into his lungs. He jerked away from the hands that held him and rolled over to heave. The water rushed out of his mouth and all over Pamela’s legs and painted toenails.  

Lance sighed heavily and gave up swinging his arms around. Just like back then, he was looking like a fool. Pamela never did talk to him again. He idly wondered what she was up to now, when he began feeling a crackling at the base of his neck. All of his muscles tensed up and he scrunched up into a ball.

What was the tension from? Flailing too much? Did his suit tear on his back and he was slowly dying?

The crackling wouldn’t let up, until Lance realized his comm was pulsing. Hesitantly, Lance switched frequencies and cried out when he heard the familiar fuzzy hum of a stable link.

“--nce, ca--Repe--Lance, please respond.” The voice on the other end was Hunk. Big, beautiful Hunk and his big, beautiful Yellow Lion were soon in Lance’s vision.

“I-I’m here, Hunk, oh man, Hunk I’m so glad to hear you--s-see you!” Lance croaked out, choking back tears.

Yellow Lion looked banged up but she was there. As she opened her maw in order to let him in, Lance felt his heart sink. Where was Blue? Was she also stranded somewhere in the depths of space, drowning in the same loneliness that almost consumed Lance? He fell to his knees, thinking of all the prayers his mother would mutter, and promptly rolled onto his back.

Hunk’s heavy footsteps made Lance sigh in relief; it was great hearing sounds again. “Hey buddy, you going to pass out? Does anything hurt?” Hunk leaned over him and his hands kept fluttering around, unsure of what to do.

“No, I’m just enjoying the feeling of being grounded. Nothing hurts, except, I don’t know where Blue is.” Lance closed his eyes to focus, but he couldn’t sense anything. “Hunk, can you do me a favor?”

“Yeah man, whatever you want.”

Not once opening his eyes, Lance popped off his helmet. “Keep talking. About anything.”

Hunk sighed, long and heavy, as if he were releasing a ton of pressure. “Okay, so, if you couldn’t see with your own eyes, Yellow’s badly beaten. I think when that disruption happened with the wormhole, the energy involved just whiplashed in the worst way. After all the spinning and screaming, I realized that you weren’t around and that’s when things got very scary, comms were down between us, and I had to decide to either land on a nearby planet or search around. Dude, be glad I went with tails with the imaginary coin I flipped, yeah, I have an imaginary coin…” Hunk let the words rush out as he walked back to his piloting chair, his breaths expertly tucked between the small breaks in his sentences.

Lance allowed the words to wash over him, the warm comfort spreading over him like a blanket. Hunk’s cockpit seemed more cramped than Lances, possibly due to their lions’ traits and personalities. Blue’s was open and breathable, like peeking out a bedroom window to see the sky. Lance inhaled and exhaled slowly, grateful that his five senses were absorbing something, instead of the numbing deep space. 

‘ _It’s...better than_ nothing.’ Lance shook his head at the bad joke he thought of. He’ll have to tell Hunk that one, after Hunk ran out of things to rant about.


End file.
